Archangel – Bolivia

Agricafe is owned by the Rodriguez family who started this business in 1986. At that time, the family used to rent wet mills in Caranavi region, buying cherries from 2,000 producers and in 2001 they built their current wet mill, called Buena Vista, in Caranavi. Very quickly a dry mill in la Paz was built and the family started exporting operations. In 2012 they decided to buy land and start farming as well. They now have 8 farms in the Caranavi region and 5 farms in Samaipata region. They produce coffee, process it at the wet mill then dry mill and export it themselves directly.

The family has also started a training program called Sol de la Mañana: 51 producers are now part of the program and are trained by the Agricafe team to produce more and better coffee with their existing farms. As a result of that, many producers’ kids have studied agronomy/biology/soil dynamic, etc. and are planning to come back and manage the farm with their parents. All those producers deliver cherries or parchment to Buena Vista Mill where they get paid premium prices. The Archangel farm runs on 4 hectares fully planted with coffee trees of 4 varieties: Red and Yellow Caturra and Red and Yellow Catuai under native tree shade system. The cherries are harvested and taken to Buena Vista Mill the same day where they are honey processed.